


did everything feel beautiful when you let go of the idea of being anything at all

by gayreids



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Angst, Depression, Eating Disorders, Gen, Heavy Angst, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt Peter Parker, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Prose Poem, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-01
Updated: 2018-11-01
Packaged: 2019-08-14 09:06:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16489688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gayreids/pseuds/gayreids
Summary: peter struggles to breathe sometimes, but that's hardly anything new.





	did everything feel beautiful when you let go of the idea of being anything at all

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sharpandgloriousthorn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sharpandgloriousthorn/gifts).
  * Inspired by [i exist i exist i exist (scream it from a cliff and hear it echo)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16457018) by [sharpandgloriousthorn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sharpandgloriousthorn/pseuds/sharpandgloriousthorn). 



> this is inspired by flatsound's music and sharpandgloriousthorn's amazing fic!! this takes place three weeks after i exist i exist i exist ends.

it starts again on a saturday, only three weeks after the last chapter in the chronicles of his despair ended.

he curses whoever is writing the story of his life with a voice so silent that not even he can hear it sometimes but it's always there. his tears fall without being summoned and without being acknowledged except for being wiped away when he regains the numbness he so prefers over the feeling that he is crumbling into ashes and dust all over again.

  
maybe peter was never resurrected and this is his own private hell.

he can't feel the passage of time. the arbitrary laws of being a human being don't apply to him anymore and he doesn't feel scared by that.

he doesn't eat breakfast on saturday.  
  
-

he's on a rooftop now, watching as people the size of ants and cars the size of crumbs go about their days.

the wind would usually bother him or at the very least make him use the in built heating function in his suit but he doesn't feel it anymore. he remains too silent and too unfeeling. he deletes the _5 unread messages from mr stark_ and _2 missed calls from guy in the chair_. the first emotion he feels in weeks is relief. 

since the soul stone (since _i don't wanna go_ and since feeling himself fade out of existence like a news story that went unpublished and eventually scrapped) nothing has hurt him, at least physically. peter wonders if his pain receptors are damaged but shakes the thought out of his mind as soon as it got there. he doesn't feel fully human, let alone alive; if he doesn't feel human then surely not feeling pain is a non-issue.

peter can still physically function but a large piece of him stayed down after he got back up. 

-

he can smile under the weight of understanding smiles and promises that it gets worse before it gets better and he can still make hesitantly sarcastic quips to assure everyone he loves that he's perfectly fine.

he can't however, ignore the dull sense of _absolutely nothing_ spreading through his soul like thick butter.

peter struggles to breathe sometimes, but that's hardly new.

he's perfectly fine until he isn't, and peter parker doesn't own the tools to fix his problems this time. his mentor is a mechanic and peter always learned quickly so it's ironic that the one thing he can't solder back to perfection is the one thing that needs fixing the most. he screams into a void in his own mind and then takes the screams and pleads and locks them into a box destined to be shipped somewhere far away.

sometimes peter wishes he himself could be shipped somewhere far away, as if a fresh start and a change of scenery would make any of this better somehow.

-

peter parker looks at himself in the mirror and doesn't recognise the person staring back. he touches his too prominent cheekbones and pokes the dark smudges under his eyes. he pulls faces and the person follows his actions. after ten minutes of trying to prove that the reflection can't possibly be of him, he tapes a big t-shirt to the wall so it covers the reflective surface.

peter parker is curled up in his bed with cuts aching and growing warm as they heal. as they knit themselves shut, he can feel his heart begin to harden with callouses that no fifteen year old boy should have. he wonders if his father would be proud of him and what he's become.

peter parker goes back to the cliff where he stood not even a month ago and misses when he was covered in blood and in pain. he traces over the places in his hair where it was matted with dark red and looks at the exact place where he cried when even the weight of gravity became too much to bear.

he turns away and leaves after that.

-

peter parker smokes his first cigarette in an alley beside a corner shop ten miles from where he lives and pretends not to notice the bewilderment on tony's face when he smells ash trays and lung disease radiating off peter. (sometimes he wishes that for once, _just once_ , tony would just talk to him before he reaches breaking point. he doesn't fault the other man, though. he knows that even if tony pushed and pushed, peter would push back with greater force. he really doesn't want to go for the lowest blows but he will if it means he gets to self destruct and be empty and smoke in peace.)

he wonders how so much hurt and anger and trauma can fit inside one small body. he can feel it rattle inside of him and he resolves that if it had enough space to rattle, he can obviously take more. there are ghosts in the walls of his bedroom and they thud against the bricks in their desperation to haunt him all at the same time.

peter then resolves that they don't reach him because he's a ghost himself, and that it's only a matter of time before his physical self withers away with the force of his self deprecating mind.

_

peter parker breaks his finger by bending it backwards until it snaps and watches with detatched, almost clinical curiosity as it heals. it doesn't occur to him that this isn't _normal_ until a week later but by then he's already broken another one.

  
may knocks on his door one weekend and asks if he wants to go to the sandwich shop at the end of the road.  
( _sheknowssheknowssheknowssheknowssheknows_ )  
and peter pretends to be asleep, even if he's only actually been unconscious for a total of nine hours the past three days.

  
it doesn't matter if may is fooled or not (she isn't) or even if she cares (she does) because peter parker is a shell of a person now. the ghosts in his bedroom walls don't clamour to terrorise him anymore because there's nothing- _nobody_ left to terrorise.

  
peter parker lies awake in his bed until the sunrise and switches off his alarm a minute before it rings. he doesn't make a single facial expression the whole day because simply being upright is exhausting enough.

  
he avoids his friends and doesn't eat lunch.

  
peter parker feels empty sometimes, but that's hardly anything new.

 

**Author's Note:**

> as always, stay safe and reach out if you're reaching breaking point.


End file.
